Awareness always comes first and that can come in a variety of ways, but being aware of all of the pressures and all of the ideas and all of the things that have been impressed upon you.

And then say, alright, that's all that stuff. Where is that living inside of me? What do I like and what do I don't like?

Alright, welcome to Barbell Thug. My blood's out here with Doug Larson, Alex Maclin, hanging out on it in Austin, Texas.

And we're with Aubrey Marcus, CEO, founder. Did you have co-founders? No, found this one on my own, but Rogan came in pretty quick. It's kind of like a co-founder.

Yeah, big plus there. Yeah, big plus.

And I think anyone who follows you on social media realizes that you're doing things differently and you're a bit of an experimenter, you're pushing boundaries.

You're not doing things that the typical person is doing. There's a lot of things that allow you to have that. You're an entrepreneur, so you don't have the clock in and clock out.

Well, I like this stuff. The entrepreneur also can never clock out. That's true. That's true. I mean, as things get more and more hectic, sometimes I just fantasize about that job where I was done at the end of the day.

Like, yeah, my day's done. Yeah, yeah, haven't had one of those days in a long time. I think every entrepreneur goes through that phase where there's definitely a time where I was like, oh, fuck, nine to five would be so cool.

Yeah, I could be off work and not think about it. What's that like?

It's like the expression of it's that not to be new as the only person that I work in 80 hour work week. So it doesn't have to work a 40 hour work week.

Exactly. Yeah. And it is, it is exactly what suits me the best. And I wouldn't change anything. I'm really living the dream. But, you know, for people who put that on a pedestal and think if I was only an entrepreneur, everything would be awesome.

Like, it's a fucking trial by fire too. You know, like all of these things have their strengths. So, you know, be grateful for where you're at. You know, there's advantages no matter what you're doing for sure.

I like that. Yeah, be grateful for where you're at. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people's just like they see the shiny object and then they're trying to chase it and they drop themselves crazy. But sometimes you've got to appreciate where you're at at the current moment.

People are where you're supposed to be right now. Yeah, they're good at finding the silver lining in other people's lives. Yeah. It's true.

Social media doesn't help though too. Some of that part, you know, yeah. Yeah. I mean, what am I going to do? Am I going to post like me being all stressed out?

Yeah. I'm working stress out. Of course, I'm not going to post that. I do talk about that kind of stuff openly because I want people to understand that, you know, I think we got to break these ideas of these fantasy lives that people live.

And, you know, anybody who's a leader or someone people look up to, like, I think it's our responsibility as leaders to show our vulnerability to show that we have shitty days that we lost trapped in our own head.

And, you know, we're going to have a stupid stuff and that we make mistakes and we forgive ourselves and move on. Speak for yourself, Aubrey.

I think people appreciate that actually. I think a lot of people respond positively positively to that because they see real. Yeah, because it's real. And, you know, you see this person, like, oh, shit, they're like this big thing, but they experience the same problems I do. So maybe I'm not that, the mom not that bad off, you know.

I'm not that bad off right now in the business world with the increased transparency and the do you think that the vulnerability is a leadership quality that's more important now than it was 30 years ago?

Transparency, yes. I still think there's a lot of struggle with vulnerability. I think people are still putting out more of a shell of what they think they want people to see than what is actually true.

...